How to use specificity in a sentence
32 example sentences · noun
Specificity means the state of being specific rather than general. Example: “Congress must set a clear standard: Police should prove with specificity what's on your phone before forcing it open, and only after the device's owner has consulted with a lawyer.”
Examples of specificity by meaning
nounThe state of being specific rather than general.
- Congress must set a clear standard: Police should prove with specificity what's on your phone before forcing it open, and only after the device's owner has consulted with a lawyer.2024 October 14, Patrick Eddington, James Craven, Police Want the Password to Your Phone
More sentences with specificity
- Higher layers flesh out rasm; they provide body, specificity, and personality.2017, J. R. Osborn, Letters of Light. From the entry rasm
- These epochal shifts contributed to lend specificity to the substantive rationality of the state — raison d'etat.2012, Yale H. Ferguson, R. J. Barry Jones, Political Space: Frontiers of Change and Governance in a Globalizing World, page 173. From the entry raison d'état
- Kinomics can be used to understand both the mechanism of action and the specificity of potential drugs.2009, John M. Walker, Molecular Biology and Biotechnology, page 316. From the entry kinomics
- PD mice also lacked serum Ig of 3-83 specificity (3-83 idiotype).2000 March 31, Valerie Kouskoff et al., “T Cell-Independent Rescue of B Lymphocytes from Peripheral Immune Tolerance”, in Science, volume…. From the entry idiotype
- There’s both potency and, more importantly, specificity to the theme.2025 November 25, Caroline Siede, “Zootopia 2 is a stagnant sequel with one stellar subplot”, in AV Club. From the entry no small thing
- PCR specificity and product detection was checked postamplification by examining the temperature-dependent melting curves of the PCR products.2016 February 12, “Expression of cagA, virB/D Complex and/or vacA Genes in Helicobacter pylori Strains Originating from Patients with…. From the entry postamplification
- This characteristic is desirable for any antiglaucomatous drug or formulation as it increases its specificity reducing potential side effects.2015 July 24, “Ocular Inserts for Sustained Release of the Angiotensin-Converting Enzyme 2 Activator, Diminazene Aceturate, to Treat…. From the entry antiglaucomatous
- The low specificity suggests that an immunopanel including also HBME-1 and Galectin-3 could obtain the highest diagnostic accuracy in thyroid lesions.2015 July 18, “The Role of CD56 in Thyroid Fine Needle Aspiration Cytology: A Pilot Study Performed on Liquid Based Cytology”, in PLOS…. From the entry immunopanel
- Considering the Prox-1 detection also in non-ECs, the specificity of detection was confirmed using venolymphatic malformation of the human lip.2015 July 17, Sirpa Loukovaara et al., “A Case of Abnormal Lymphatic-Like Differentiation and Endothelial Progenitor Cell Activation in…. From the entry venolymphatic
- At present, clinical monitoring of protein concentrations and of antibody titer and specificity are carried out by immunometry.2006, Jean-Charles Sanchez, Biomedical Applications of Proteomics, page 227. From the entry immunometry
- These are large molecules, usually proteins, to which the drug binds tightly and with a high degree of specificity.2001, Leslie Iversen, Drugs: A Very Short Introduction, Oxford, page 24. From the entry receptor
- Incubation of HepG2 cells with the copper chelator bathocuproine was completely ineffective (Fig. 2 C), showing ion specificity.1998 January 30, Chinmay K. Mukhopadhyay et al., “Role of Ceruloplasmin in Cellular Iron Uptake”, in Science, volume 279, number 5351…. From the entry bathocuproine
- Contrarily, the prefix “sub-” doesn’t change meaning so much as it provides specificity, as seen in the difference between “title” and “subtitle.”2020 March 14, Lindsay del Valle, “36 Spanish Prefixes That Will Increase Your Vocabulary Times 100!”, in Homeschool Spanish Academy. From the entry sub-
- The high sensitivity and specificity of the developed aptasensor suggests that this novel method is very promising for the detection and identification of C.2015 September 4, “Detection of Cryptosporidium parvum Oocysts on Fresh Produce Using DNA Aptamers”, in PLOS ONE, →DOI. From the entry aptasensor
- Specifically, peakism is marked by many of the same characteristics of recognized ideologies, including internal coherence, intellectual abstractness, specificity, sophistication, dogmatism, and affective investment.2015, Matthew Schneider-Mayerson, Peak Oil: Apocalyptic Environmentalism and Libertarian Political Culture, page 18. From the entry peakism
- For some happy specificity, let's suppose that all electrons are among the basic physical individuals, in the actual world, during its present Eon.2014, Peter Unger, Empty Ideas: A Critique of Analytic Philosophy - Page 91. From the entry fieldy
- Since the differences in amino acid sequence associated with allotypy are small, rabbit IgG molecules of different allotype share most of their antigenic specificities.2014, Alfred Nisonoff, John E. Hopper, Susan B. Spring, The Antibody Molecule, →ISBN, page 346. From the entry allotypy
- That is, establishing as it does a replacement binary (mono versus bi, rather than hetero versus homo) it functions to erase lesbian and gay specificity.2013, Dawn Atkins, Bisexual Women in the Twenty-First Century, →ISBN, page 37. From the entry mono
- In addition to communalism and agoraphilia, there is a final characteristic of the plebeian experience relating to the temporal specificity of plebeian action.2013, Martin Breaugh, The Plebeian Experience: A Discontinuous History of Political Freedom, →ISBN, page XXII. From the entry agoraphilia
- The specificity of the shape of the binding site arises from the base sequence of the aptamer, which determines the base-pairing pattern of the oligomer.2005, (US) National Research Council, Sensor Systems for Biological Agent Attacks, page 117. From the entry aptamer
- Government authorities would also have to write legislation that would recognize the specificity of their suffering and restitute them for their losses.2003, Maud Mandel, In the Aftermath of Genocide: Armenians and Jews in Twentieth-Century France, Duke University Press, →ISBN, page 54. From the entry restitute
- Thus, a mutation affecting the structure of a class II molecule changes the co-recognition specificity of a histotope on the APC of the mutant.1984, William E. Paul, Immunogenetics, page 156. From the entry histotope
- An expression which lacks the proper specificity results in undertranslation; when the translator is too specific, on the other hand, overtranslation results.1974, American Translators Association, State University of New York at Binghamton. Translation Center, Translators and translating…. From the entry undertranslation
- On “Fearless,” Swift sharpened her lyrical specificity, using proper nouns and detailed renderings of conversations and experiences to create an indelible image of Taylor Swift, the savvy naïf.2021 April 12, Carrie Battan, “Taylor Swift Wins with “Fearless (Taylor’s Version)””, in The New Yorker. From the entry naïf
- Another specificity of communicative interaction is that Reddit has two types of inner rules — local rules of subreddits and the so-called Reddiquette, general rules of the platform.2021, I International Science Conference on Multidisciplinary Research: Abstracts of I International Scientific and Practical Conference…. From the entry reddiquette
- Previous phylogenies including multiple members of microgastrine genera have shown patterns of high host specificity within species and a high degree of host conservatism among closely related species.2016 March 5, “Morphological and Molecular Characterization of Reared Parasitoid Wasps of the Genus Glyptapanteles Ashmead 1904 (Insecta…. From the entry microgastrine
- To examine the specificity of the effect of red LED on the lignan production in U18i-CPi-Fk, we compared accumulation of pinoresinol aglycone and matairesinol aglycone in the F.2015 December 8, “Generation of Triple-Transgenic Forsythia Cell Cultures as a Platform for the Efficient, Stable, and Sustainable…. From the entry matairesinol
- One involves determining the specificity of an apparent direct physical interaction with the antigen (desetope function), while the other involves binding to the T cell receptor (histotope function).2012, Benvenuto Pernis, Processing and Presentation of Antigens, page 116. From the entry desetope
- Only a dozen or so SNARE combinations are fusogenic, corresponding to the known transport processes in the cell; hence, SNAREs can impart considerable specificity to membrane fusion.2009 January 23, Thomas C. Sudhof, James E. Rothman, “Membrane Fusion: Grappling with SNARE and SM Proteins”, in Science, volume 323…. From the entry fusogenic
- The graphic energy of their martial arts combat was toned down, their slit-eyed ethnic specificity was made into doe-eyed racial ambiguity and their cynical sneers softened into eager grins.2000, Dudley Jones, Tony Watkins, A necessary fantasy?: the heroic figure in children's popular culture, page 273. From the entry doe-eyed
- So far as the actual basis for this qualitative specificity is concerned, the odor really becomes specific but not nameably so, in terms of what one might call texture.1930, American Psychological Association, Journal of experimental psychology. From the entry nameably
Meaning of specificity
- noun The state of being specific rather than general.
- noun The probability, in a binary classification test, of a true negative being correctly identified.
- noun The extent to which a particular diagnostic test is specific for, or a symptom or sign is specific to, a given condition.
Questions about specificity in a sentence
- How do you use specificity in a sentence?
- Specificity is used as a noun. For example: “Congress must set a clear standard: Police should prove with specificity what's on your phone before forcing it open, and only after the device's owner has consulted with a lawyer.”
- What is a short sentence with specificity?
- “There’s both potency and, more importantly, specificity to the theme.”
- What does specificity mean?
- Specificity means the state of being specific rather than general.
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: specificity (page history and authors) and the entries each sentence comes from. Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws chose the sentences, left out offensive ones and quotations older than 1900, and marked the word in each. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
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Cite this page: “How to use specificity in a sentence.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sentences/specificity. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.
